Rep. Alan Williams files bill to repeal Stand Your Ground law

Florida Rep. Alan Williams said he will support people who protect themselves or their property, but the Stand Your Ground Law does not only protect their actions.
Williams said the law also has become a bastion for those who actually break the law.
“I’m a proponent of constitutional right to bear arms but we have to reconcile that faith in society with giving the folks the ability to hide behind the law,” said Williams, a Democrat from Tallahassee. “The law needs some fine tuning.”
Williams filed a bill on Wednesday fully repealing Stand Your Ground, saying that the recent attention it received over the past year proved it needed changes.
Williams had not been elected to the House when the law was passed in 2005 and said the Legislature, at the time, did not have the information that surfaced from a task force headed by Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll. The task force was formed in the wake of the February shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford. Martin’s assailant, George Zimmerman said he shot the teen in self-defense but has since been charged with second-degree murder.
“I think that the task force and all of the attention from the Trayvon Martin case have given us enough information to help make this law a lot stronger,” Williams said, adding another case drawing attention to the law was the November death of a teen in Jacksonville. “I think this is a good chance for us to look at everything.”